Crossroads
by Scrat and Jidders
Summary: Kino and Hermes unexpectedly find themselves retracing the steps of two anonymous monks from an old Koen.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Kino's Journey (Obviously) or the koan written below.

_Two monks were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling._

_Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection._

_"Come on girl", said the first monk at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud._

_The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told the first monk, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"_

"_I left the woman back at the crossroad," The monk said, "are you still carrying her?"_

_ -Anonymous_

The story of the crossroads that divided the two villages has spread far and wide. I never had any intentions of visiting the crossroad itself, despite hearing the origin recently. Honestly, the tale had already drifted to the back of my mind when I found myself staring at a distinctive sign pointing towards two different countries. I had never seen the clearing before, but it was familiar all the same.

"I'm running out of gas again, Kino." Hermes sputtered slowly up to the signpost that noted the two different directions that they could go.

"There's nothing that we can do about that now Hermes, but it looks like there are a couple of towns coming up where we can re-supply." I kicked down the stand so that we'd have a moment to think as we figured out what to do next, and lifted up my goggles to inspect the sign more closely. Unfortunately, it didn't have any markings to show how far we were from either town.

"Well in that case, I'll need to get my tail lights fixed as well, they've been on the fritz ever since we left that one country a while back."

I smiled—Hermes' lights were working just fine, but sometimes the motorad just had to be dramatic. "Which way do you think we should go?" Both roads were ambiguous enough that as far as I could tell it didn't matter which one we chose.

Hermes hummed, strangely in tune with the low rumble of his engine, "I vote left."

"Left it is then." I said, pulling my goggles back down on my face.

"That's it? Usually you'd want to go your own way anyways." Hermes questioned.

"Usually we aren't running low on gas in the middle of nowhere."

"Oh I see, you just don't want to be responsible if we end up stranded in the middle of nowhere."

I kicked up the stand, and began wheeling Hermes down to our new direction. "Well, there is that…"

"But?"

"Well, either way you look at it, there's about an equal chance that either one of us could end up picking the wrong road." I revved up the engine and we started heading off towards our next destination, "Honestly though, I just don't want to have listen to your complaining if we actually do run out of gas."

"Hey, that is uncalled for!"

I laughed, "That would definitely make me regret not filling up at the last station."

As we zoomed past the trees that dotted the vast country road, Hermes shouts were swallowed up by the expansive emptiness surrounding us, and the darkening orange-pink sky. "Laugh it up now Kino, but no matter what ends up happening, it's still your fault for not thinking this far ahead!"


	2. Luck

I had once told Hermes that among all the tools a good traveler must have, the most important asset was luck. It was in a situation that was not too different from the trouble that we were now in, as I recall. For this reason, it would have been harder to admit that it was our luck that had run out first as we burned up the last of our gas causing Hermes to slowly putter to a stop punctuated with a less than triumphant _I told you so_. After all, we had been lucky in finding a collection of trees not far from the road with low enough branches to hang a small tarp off of as a sort of makeshift shelter.

Currently it was dark, and cold, and every now and then we would hear the telltale trickle of water or feel the occasional spatter of wetness that foreboded the coming rain.

"I am going to rust out here, and you are going to catch pneumonia and die." Hermes deadpanned.

"There's no need to be dramatic. The next country can't be too far down the road, we just have to be patient for a while until the rain lets up a bit."

"That's easy for you to say, you'll already be gone by the time I get picked up and taken away to be sold as scrap." I stared at Hermes for a moment as the moonlight glinted off of his headlight. He knew we had been stranded in far more dire situations before. Clearly his complaining was meant to be my punishment for not listening to him earlier on.

"I bet the guy that comes to scrape me off of the side of the road will be a huge man named Road Kill with a dark, waxy mustache and a pair of sunglasses that he never takes off." Hermes continued to whine, and I let him. It was probably best to let him get it out of his system now, rather than have him be more upset with me later.

I sighed as I began to analyze our current situation. If only I hadn't talked with that one man at the last rest stop. Had he not assured me that we didn't have much farther to go before we hit the next country, we probably wouldn't have gotten ourselves in this situation in the first place. I hate to even think it, but it seems that our luck is just about as worn out as my leaky tent. Why is it that it always seems to start raining whenever it feels like things can't get any worse?

I leaned back against the hard birch and listened as Hermes continued describe in detail his incredulous story of how we would be found here on the side of the road. There was really no point in sorting out the details now—as off putting as this road bump was, we'd be on our way soon enough anyways. Luck was tricky that way; it could shift as easily as the changing winds.

"Kino…"

Looking up to the huge expanse of cloudy darkness, I couldn't help but notice that the troublesome rain started to fall at a more even pace.

"_Kino…"_

For lack of a better thing to do, I focused on the sound of the droplets that had started to pelt against the tarp.

"KINO!"

"…. Huh?" Unabashedly, I tilted my head to face Hermes who had apparently finished his story about our untimely demise. I probably should have felt a bit more guilty about earlier, but I guess it didn't really matter that much now anyways.

"I just asked if you could see that weird light out there in the distance."

I looked out towards the edge of the road where we had come from. Although in accompaniment with the rain a fine layer of mist was obscuring my vision, sure enough there in the distance I saw the same small, bobbing light that Hermes had recognized earlier. Standing up by the edge of the tarp, I squinted my eyes to get a closer look at the approaching anomaly. I could just barely make out the outline of a shadowy figure attached to the glowing light. "It looks like there's a person on the road!" I announced as I pulled the hood of my rain jacked up over my head. "I'll be right back, I'm going to go ask them for help." I nodded to Hermes as I exited the sanctuary of the shelter.

"Just be careful Kino," Hermes grumbled as I closed the distance between the stranger and myself, "It's in situations like these where unsuspecting travelers get hopelessly lost, leaving their poor, defenseless motorads to rust on the side of the road!"


End file.
